Psalm 95 in Hebrews 3-4

Listen or read the following transcript form The Gospel Coalition as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology from Hebrews 3-4.

In the second session, I would like to direct your attention to Hebrews, chapter 3 and 4 (part of 3 and part of 4). I’m going to take the time to read from Hebrews 3:7–4:13 because all of this long section is essentially an exposition of Psalm 95. Hear then what Scripture says. Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 7:

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“So, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction. As has just been said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,

‘So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’ And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words, ‘On the seventh day God rested from all his work.’ And again in the passage above he says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’

Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it ‘Today.’ This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:

‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.

Grant, Heavenly Father, insight by your Spirit, not only that we may better understand, but more wholeheartedly trust, more willingly obey and thus be conformed to your own dear Son. Forbid that we should be like those here described who fall away because of unbelief and disobedience. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

Now I’ve tried to choose passages of Scripture in this series that are taken up by Hebrews, that function in Hebrews in a slightly different way so that we can witness together some of the ways the New Testament uses the Old. This one is particularly interesting. Psalm 95, which is quoted for us already in chapter 3, verses 7–11. It’s particularly interesting because here you find the author’s exegetical mind working itself out on the page. You can watch it.

What happened last night really depended on examining the Old Testament context and understanding some New Testament concepts, some assumptions, some christological assumptions and so on. A lot of pieces have to be assumed. They are taught somewhere or other in Scripture. I do believe the exegesis last night was fair, but you don’t see the actual logic of the author working itself out on the page. In this passage, you do.

What you discover is that the author uses Psalm 95 in two distinct ways. At the risk of oversimplification, in chapter 3, verses 7 to the end of the chapter, verse 19, he uses Psalm 95 in what I’ll call a moralizing way. In chapter 4, verses 1–13, he uses the same psalm in what I’ll call a salvation historical typological way. If that sounds like too much jargon, be patient with me. I get there in the end.

First of all, the moralizing way. Now once more before we look at how the passage is used, we really ought to look at the passage itself, Psalm 95. Let me direct your attention there for just a few moments. Psalm 95 is like a number of other psalms. There is a reference to something antecedent in Israel’s history from which certain moral lessons are drawn.

There are quite a lot of Old Testament psalms that do that, and this way of deriving theological lessons also shows up in the New Testament. Think of Stephen’s speech, for example. When Stephen is about to become a martyr, he gives an address. If you’re not used to addresses quite like that, you read large chunks of it and you think, “What on earth is he doing giving a kind of history lesson of the Old Testament? For goodness’ sake! Couldn’t he use his time a little more tellingly?”

Then gradually, you begin to see what he’s doing. He retells the Old Testament story that everybody knows in his audience in such a way as to emphasize certain themes. One of the themes he emphasizes (it’s not the only one) as he tells the story (Somewhat selectively; inevitably it has to be selective, as he can’t say everything) is to point out how often when God disclosed himself in the past the people turned aside.

Instead of thinking of the people of God as great heroes because they received the revelation from God and they were the only ones amongst all the nations who actually received the word, the actual history is a lot more checkered. What you find, instead, is God revealed and they disobeyed. He saved them and they wandered away.

He gave them a king and the king turned out to be corrupt. Then he sent a prophet and they drifted off again. Just reread Judges. Just reread the historical books. It’s part of the whole pattern. Lesson? So it’s not too surprising then when the Messiah himself comes if he’s crucified and put on a tree. How do you derive that lesson?

You derive the lesson in that instance by rereading the Old Testament history through a certain kind of lens, a certain kind of perspective that shows how often that pattern actually occurs. So before we look at Psalm 95, another psalm that does the same sort of thing even more pointedly, Psalm 78 …

“My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth with a parable.” A parable does not mean necessarily a narrative account. It simply means with an analogous way of thinking, a mashal, a wise utterance of some sort. “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will teach you lessons from the past, things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation.”

Do you see what’s going on here? He openly says that he’s going to have to explain some things that are somewhat hidden (they’re parabolic, they’re analogous arguments), and yet on the other hand they are lessons that are there from the past. So as he wanders through the history, all the through these next verses there are lessons drawn out from Israel’s history.

Just drop down, for example, to verse 17: “But they continued to sin against him, rebelling in the wilderness against the Most High. They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God; they said, ‘Can God really spread a table in the wilderness? True, he struck the rock, and water gushed out, streams flowed abundantly, but can he also give us bread?’ ”

You can hear the accounts, can’t you? You remember the history yourself. Lessons are drawn from all of this. So now, Psalm 95: “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.

In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.

Today, if only you would hear his voice, ‘Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’ ”

Now in terms of the flow of the argument in the psalms, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s a warmhearted, expansive invitation to come and worship God, to delight in him our Creator, our Maker, our Sovereign. He is worthy of all praise. Stinger in the tail? Don’t be like your own ancestors during the wilderness years.

They kept testing God. They kept wandering away. They rebelled, not only at these specific places, Meribah and Massah, but with the reference to the whole 40 years that inevitably you call to mind the approach at the Kadesh-Barnea how the spies went in and most of them gave a bad report and as a result all of that generation died off, except for those who were under 20, except for Joshua and Caleb.

In other words, don’t be like your own heritage because God is so wonderful. He’s good. He’s holy, but he does hold people to account. “So today, now again, if only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts because God may say to you what he then said in principle to them, ‘I declare it on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest.’ ”

The meaning of Psalm 95 is pretty straightforward, isn’t it? If you have observed some small differences in wording when you read Psalm 95 in our English Bibles and then read how it’s quoted in Hebrews, chapter 3, the primary reason is because the Old Testament was written in Hebrew here and then it was translated into Greek, and when the New Testament writers pick it up, they quote it from the Greek translation. It’s already been translated.

Once in a while there is a change that makes you wonder what on earth is going on here? This really seems distorting the original Hebrew. That’s another whole discussion that is very interesting, but I’m not going to get into it now. If you are interested in it, however, there’s a really good essay (it’s now a little old) by MoisÈs Silva in Scripture and Truth where he picks up a couple of examples in Hebrews and then tries to work them through and forces you to think your way through those sorts of questions.

In this case it affects none of the points that the writer to the Hebrews picks up, so I’m not going to spend time dealing with those things now. Now then, let’s see what the author says. I’m not going to take the time to expound in detail the first 6 verses, except to say that the author has already introduced the rough occasion, because he’s introduced Moses. Jesus is greater than Moses. Moses was a faithful servant in his own time and place, but a servant, a slave in the household, whereas Jesus, by contrast, is the Son.

“So as the Holy Spirit says …” Now the “so” picks up verse 6, the end of that preceding exhortation. “Yes, Jesus is the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” That’s the way that section ends up: we really are the constituents of that household if we persevere. “So as the Holy Spirit says …” Then the whole thrust of the moralizing application of Psalm 95 is, “Don’t forget to persevere.” That is the nature of the connection between what is preceded and this actual quotation.

Now look at what the author does with it. Verse 12: “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’ …” He’s picked up that word today from the first line of the quotation. “Today, if you hear his voice.”

God gives you a ‘today’ in which we are mandated to persevere and to believe and to obey, as long as there is a ‘today’ where God is addressing us, “Make sure that we encourage one another in this daily, in this persevering day-by-day ‘Today,’ to press on, lest any of us be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”

Verse 14: “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.” Or some put it, “If we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfastly till the end.” The TNIV has it paraphrased exactly right. “We have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.”

That is rearticulating even more forcefully what was said in verse 6, in the transitional verse. “Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” Now verse 14: “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.”

I’ll come back to that verse in a moment. Just follow the flow of the argument. “As has just been said …” So now we’re going back not just to the “today,” but to what follows immediately after. “… ‘Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’ ” In other words, they did not hold firmly till the end their original conviction. They rebelled. We mustn’t do that. In our “today” we must not.

So the author says, “Now let’s pause for a moment and think. Who were they who rebelled? Were they pharaoh’s troops? Are they the rebels? Pagans, perhaps, up and down the Arabic peninsula? Nope. “Who were they who went and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?” In that sense, they had already been saved.

Well, saved out of Egypt. I’m not talking about what’s going on in their hearts. That finally is God’s business. Nevertheless, they had been saved out of Egypt. They had escaped the land of slavery, but they hadn’t yet got into the land of promise. So they’d been saved out of, but they had not yet been saved into. In this interval period, they have fallen away.

They did not hold firmly to the end their original conviction. They did not persevere. “Who were they? Well they were those Moses led out of Egypt. With whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness?” An entire generation of 20 and over. Over 40 years, just dying off, dying off, dying off. “And to whom did God swear that they would never enter into his rest if to not those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter because of their unbelief.”

It’s worth pausing just here for a moment and trying to think pastorally and theologically. You can see right on the face of it without any difficult exegesis at this point the use of the Old Testament is, quite frankly, moralizing. You have the Old Testament example and it becomes a kind of pattern of moralizing implications for us. That’s the way the Old Testament text here is used.

You have a very similar sort of argument theologically speaking in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, where once again in the first 13 verses the author (in that case, Paul) focuses on the failure of the ancient Israelites to persevere to the end. That does happen. I need to say that that is not the way the Old Testament is customarily used. I think that we use the Old Testament like that quite a lot.

Have you ever done a sort of “Life of Abraham” series? Or heard a “Life of Nehemiah” series? Or worked through some of the kings of the Old Testament? Basically the argument runs like this: “This king was good. Therefore, be good. This king was bad. Therefore, don’t be bad.” Isn’t that the way it works? It’s a kind of moralizing approach.

So you work through the life of Abraham or the life of Daniel and all the good things that they do, go and do that likewise. All the bad things they do.… This is shocking; thou must not do them. Now in my judgment, we vastly overdo our reading of the Old Testament this way so that all of these “life of” sorts of series tend to be just so moralizing that, at the end of the day, you’re a long way from grace. You’re a long way from understanding the gospel. It’s not the way these people are customarily used.

When you examine the five or six major places, plus a bunch of minor ones, where Abraham is used for example in the Old Testament, with only certain exceptions is Abraham picked up in a merely moralizing sort of sense. All those passages about how Abraham, for example, in Romans 4.… Abraham believed God and was reckoned to him for righteousness and becomes the ultimate paradigm for how a person is justified by grace alone through faith alone.

That’s not just a moralizing thing. There is something deep going on that sets a standard for how people are right with God. He’s not right with God because he obeyed finally and left Ur of the Chaldeans and went to Harran and eventually got to the Promised Land. But there are moralizing lessons.

Read Hebrews, for example, in chapter 11. He persevered to the end, believing that ultimately there is an ultimate city. He received the promises of God and pressed on in perseverance even though he really didn’t own any of the land except the cave of Machpelah that he bought in order to bury his wife.

There are some moralizing lessons to learn, but by and large Old Testament figures are used in more complex ways than that, in ways that we’ll see again in a moment. We saw that briefly last night. The lessons regarding David were not moralizing. They were typological. They set up a dynasty, a pattern, a trajectory that ultimately pointed to the ultimate David.

In that sense, they’re Christ-centered. The Old Testament text is not meant simply to give you moralizing stories. It’s meant to announce Jesus. There’s a whole typology that’s developing, but sometimes there are these moralizing applications. We shouldn’t shy away from them. Every once in a while you find a young preacher who has been brought up on the “life of” sorts of preaching that are just moralizing.

Then that young preacher goes to a Bible college or a seminary somewhere and realizes that there’s also some.… They just stay away from all the moralizing. That’s not right either. Here clearly the Old Testament is used in a moralizing way. There are some moral lessons to learn from the Old Testament narrative. Don’t be afraid of them.

Then we should press a little theologically and pastorally as to what this lesson is here. Clearly it’s an exhortation to persevere. That’s clear. But I think we need to ponder it in our own cultures. Listen again to 3:14. “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.” It’s almost a definition of what genuine saving faith looks like.

“We have come to share in Christ, if we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.” Let me remind you of some passages. Do you recall the parable of the sower? Mark 4, Matthew 13. Jesus describes seeds that fall on different kinds of ground. One of those kinds of ground is called rocky soil.

Rocky soil in the context of Israel, Palestine, is ground in which there is a limestone bedrock not far under a fairly shallow bit of topsoil. The seed falls in there and because it’s shallow, it heats up most quickly in the warm spring rains. As a result, that seed germinates the fastest. It pushes up tendrils. It seems to be the most promising of the crop.

But then of course the summer heat pelts down. You don’t get any more moisture from the skies until the latter rains come, as they’re called in the Bible, and as a result the plant has got to push down its roots trying to find moisture. What happens instead is those roots hit the limestone bedrock, the plant keels over and dies.

Then Jesus explains it for us. “These are the ones,” he says, “who immediately receive the word with joy.” In other words, they’re the ones who, when you’re preaching a series, seem to be most joyfully and quickly and wonderfully converted. They receive the word with joy, but afterwards a little later when trial or persecution comes or the like, well you put down the roots and there’s nothing there.

There is such a thing as healing the wounds of my people slightly. There is such a thing as a kind of superficial conversion. It’s not uncommon in both testaments where people have made some kind of profession and maybe seem to be the most promising of the crop precisely because there’s lots of joy around them and enthusiasm and speed. But how do you find out whether or not it’s real?

“You have become partakers of Christ if you hold the beginning of your confidence steadfast to the end, if you hold firmly till the end your original conviction.” Because eternal life, by definition, sticks or it’s not eternal life. What that means is that you have to have a slightly more sophisticated theology of conversion in the first place. It’s not just that you’ve gone forward or signed a pledge.

Those of us who are pastors or just senior saints have not on occasion gone somewhere to speak and some dear senior saint aged about 82 comes up and takes your hand in her hand or his hand and says, “You know I have a son. His name is Bob, and when he was 7, at a Bible camp, he accepted Jesus as his personal savior. Of course, when he was 13 he sort of hit the skids. He hasn’t darkened the door of a church for 43 years. He did drugs for a while and he’s been in jail. He’s now on his fourth wife. Well, he was on his fourth wife, but she’s left him now. He’s a drunk. But you know, I believe, ‘Once saved, always saved.’ Don’t you, Pastor?”

Uhh, yes and no. Now how you answer pastorally may not be quite that way, but “Yes and no” just the same. The “yes” bit is if you really are saved and have eternal life, yes, because it is eternal life, it is eternal life. Once saved, always saved. Of course. But that doesn’t mean that just because a person has made a profession of faith that it necessarily is eternal life.

In fact, I’ve made it easy for myself with that story because the poor kid made his decision at age 7. The same thing could be so if the person made some kind of decision at a Billy Graham meeting let’s say at the age of 27. Now another 38 years have elapsed. Maybe he lasted six months and there’s no fruit beyond that. Initially this was a great convert, but where’s the perseverance?

I know this is complicated because sometimes it’s hard to discern between temporary backsliding and somebody who was never actually converted with the kind of grace that perseveres. I know that. I know that. It’s also complicated because sometimes that initial profession of faith is part of the ambiguity of youth, when people are still sorting out what is genuinely theirs and what they’ve merely inherited from the family. I know that. I know that.

In one place or another the Bible addresses all of those kinds of things. But nevertheless, there are passages that warn about this sort of defection, are there not? Think of 1 John, chapter 2, verse 19: “They went out from us, in order that it might be made clear that they were not of us. Indeed, if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that they were not of us.” So what showed that they really were not of us?

At one point, they were baptized members of the church, accepted in good standing as being of us. But it was their going that showed that they were not of us. When Paul deals with a man who was sleeping with his stepmother in 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, he wants the church to exercise discipline. Not only to protect the church from bad influence, but in the hope that this man will repent and his spirit will be saved in the last day.

It sounds as if Paul himself isn’t too sure about what the status of this man is. Is this going to turn out to be temporary backsliding and he will repent or is it going to turn out that he is one of those where the seed fell on rocky ground? This is not a rare theme in the New Testament. The reason why we find it so hard to accept it, I suspect, is because we have a kind of instantaneity approach to all conversion.

I have no doubt that in the mind of God a person is either converted or not, but as we observe things down here, if might be a little more difficult to discern who is genuinely converted and who is not. So you do find these sorts of emphases in the New Testament. Here’s another one. Colossians, chapter 1, verse 21: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death …”

They’re talking about conversion. Once you were this, but now God has reconciled you. “… to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation if you continue in your faith established and firm and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

I’d be the first to acknowledge that if we do persevere to the end it’s because God is at work within us. Of course. That’s why Paul writing to the Philippians can also say, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Because it’s actually God working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. That doesn’t diminish our responsibility to persevere. It grounds it in grace, gives us confidence that God is working in us both to will and to do his good pleasure but persevere we must. Let no one presume on the grace of God.

“I made a profession of faith. I can live like the world and the flesh and the Devil and there are no consequences.” Yes, there are. The consequence is as Jesus himself taught, “By their fruit you shall know them.” There is no genuinely converted Christian who does not bring forth good fruit! None! So despite the ups and downs we have, our failures, our temporary defections, there is a distinction to be made between a Judas and a Peter.

Both began well. Both were accepted as part of the apostolic band. But of one it is written, “It would’ve been better if he had not been born.” Of the other it is written, “I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. Peter, feed my sheep.” Here the author of the epistle of the Hebrews uses the example of the Israelites as reflected upon by the psalmist in order to warn against falling away, a kind of falling away that actually has people being saved from but not into.

As people might be saved today from certain bad habits, bad works, bad associations, bad lifestyle, but somehow not into the consummated kingdom. It can happen. Conversion is complicated, but where a person is genuinely converted, hear the Word of the Lord, “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold firmly till the end our original conviction.”

All right, that’s the moralizing view of Psalm 95. I hope you agree that the author here uses Psalm 95 fairly. The author has fairly understood what Psalm 95 has said and has fairly applied it to his own day. Are we happy with that? In chapter 4, verses 1–13, there is a further kind of usage. There is still some moralizing emphasis. In fact, the chapter begins that way and yet it immediately becomes a little more subtle.

Chapter 4, verse 1: “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands …” Now that’s interesting. It still stands. That’s beginning to give a hint. “The promise of entering his rest still stands” because, the psalmist says, “Today if you hear his voice.” Now originally, the Jews were going to enter into God’s rest by getting into the Promised Land. But long after they got into the Promised Land, God is still saying, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

So watch how the argument goes. Since it still stands, not only in this later time of the Psalms, but in our day too. There’s still a “today,” “Let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did.” We have the gospel, the good news proclaimed to us. They had the good news of God’s freeing them from slavery and entering into the Promised Land as his own covenant people.

We have had the good news proclaimed to us freeing us of the condemnation of sin under the Devil’s aegis and entering into consummated glory. “We’ve had the good news proclaimed to us, but the message they heard was of no value to them because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we, who have believed, enter that rest just as God has said, ‘So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’ ”

Now the following lines show that what the author is beginning to focus on now is the little word my. He’s focused earlier on the word today. Do you remember? He’s brought it up again and again and again. He’s read the whole thing. He’s understood the passage as a whole, but he decided to focus on certain exegetical details. The detail that he focused on was today in the previous verses. He’s going to return to today in a moment.

Now he’s going to focus on the word my. “They shall never enter my rest.” God talking about never entering into my rest, God’s rest. Where does God rest? Where does the Bible speak about God’s rest? You can almost hear his mind trying to work it out. God first speaks of his rest at the end of the creation account. In six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and he rested on the seventh.

The author has picked this up. If God is speaking about my rest, what does the Bible actually say about God’s rest? “Yet his work has been finished,” we’re told, “since the creation of the world.” In other words, God finished the creation. “For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘On the seventh day God rested from all his work.’ ” And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

So the author is saying that whatever else Psalm 95 means, if God is saying something like, “They shall never enter into my rest,” you can figure out a little bit about what God means by my rest when you see what has already been said before that about God’s rest. Find out! These words are not written carelessly. There’s some kind of trajectory going on.

Then he’s going to add a little bit more. “Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience …” That is, some didn’t go in in Moses’ day because of their disobedience. Nevertheless, clearly, some did go in. They did get into the Promised Land. Obviously those who died in the wilderness did not, but some did go in.

Eventually, God, through Joshua, lead his people into the Promised Land. And yet although God led his people into the Promised Land, in that sense they did enter into God’s rest, hundreds of years later God is still saying, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” So the logic is teased out.

“If Joshua had given them rest [when Joshua led them into the Promised Land], God would not have spoken later about another day.” Now you’ve got some points filling in the pattern. There’s God’s rest way back there at creation. Then some do enter into the Promised Land at the time of Joshua.

Then hundreds of years later (notice the word is later; there’s a sequence that’s developing) God is still saying, “Today, if you don’t harden your heart you can enter into my rest,” which implies necessarily that entering into the Promised Land did not exhaust this matter of entering into God’s rest. There’s still more rest to come into. Entering into the Promised Land is only a spot along the trajectory. It’s part of a plan. It can’t be the whole thing.

Then your mind starts going, “Where else do you find rest, then?” Inevitably you can’t help but remember in the Decalogue itself. “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the seventh day rested. Therefore …” Therefore, you’re supposed to look after your animals and all the rest and preserve the seventh day.

So what has happened there? The pattern of creation week becomes the ground of the mandate of the Sabbath commandment. That too is part of the rest theme. That too the author picks up. Do you notice where he goes? Verse 9: “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.” Now go back and look at what he’s done.

God’s rest at creation, then God’s using that pattern to establish the Sabbath rest in the Decalogue, then the people eventually under Joshua do get into the Promised Land (although in the interval there have been a lot of people that have died in the 40 years of wilderness wanderings).

Then in the Psalms, later, God is still saying, “Today, you can enter into that rest,” which shows that ultimately if it’s a matter of “They can still do it, but they might not,” the rest can’t be exhausted in either the Sabbath or entrance into the Promised Land. There’s more rest beyond that. You’ve got a type.

You’ve got a theme, an institution, a person, a place, something that is developing, it’s developing, it’s developing. There’s a theme that’s developing and it’s not accidental. It’s grounded in the first instance in God’s own rest. That’s why the author goes to explain that a little farther.

He says, verse 9: “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest …” Okay, what does God’s rest mean? What does it look like? Does he have a snooze? Does he swing in a hammock? Does he take a holiday in Tahiti? Well, what is actually said when God’s rest is introduced? What does the Word say?

Well all it says is he finished his work. It’s in that sense that he rested. It’s not because God was tired. He ceased his work of creation. That’s all it says. So the author infers, “For those who enter God’s rest also rests from their own work, just as God did from his.” The actual wording of how God rested, that is by ceasing from his work, becomes a paradigm for the way we must cease from our work if we are to enter into God’s rest.

Do you see how closely this author is listening to the text of Scripture? But he’s not listening to the text of Scripture carefully in isolated patches. He’s building a whole theme. Let me go back and fill in a couple of bits that I skipped over. Verse 6 … let me pick it up again. “Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it ‘Today.’ This he did when a long time later …”

Do you hear those words? The entire argument depends on historical sequence. It depends on it. “This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ ” Hence, 9 and 10: “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his.” Exhortation? “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.”

Now the two approaches to the Old Testament are coming together. The moralizing approach, “We must persevere to the end,” and the typological salvation historical approach. By salvation historical I mean the argument depends on following the historical sequential pattern of creation and Sabbath and entering into the Promised Land.

It’s now come down to Psalm 95 and now to us, where this day is still there. There’s a salvation historical pattern, a typological pattern that is now coming to home in the readers of this book who are hearing, “Today, likewise, don’t harden your hearts. You too have a rest to enter into, a rest now achieved in measure as we receive by faith and persevere in the grace of the gospel, but finally fulfilled in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”

Nowhere does the author give the impression that these are the only points along this trajectory of rest. He could’ve put some more in. For example, we saw one last night. After Joshua had given his people rest. Because the fact of the matter is that once the people got into the Promised Land, there was so much idolatry and compromise that instead of God allowing the people to take over the whole land right away, he insisted that they were going to have to struggle for it. There was really no military security in the country until the time of David.

That too was a kind of entry into the rest of God, wasn’t it? Then eventually of course the people were kicked out again at the time of the exile in three waves. Eventually they returned to a land of rest. It’s still not ultimate. But one day there was a voice heard saying, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” until the ultimate rest is found in the new heaven and the new earth. Re-read Revelation 21 and 22.

There’s a whole trajectory. The warnings are there in Scripture. The encouragements are there in Scripture. “This rest will be entered into by those who have the persevering faith that issues in obedience.” That’s what the text says. Now it’s at this point that we read verses 12 and 13. These two verses, chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, are often read somewhat detached from what precedes.

They become a kind of little disquisition on the nature of Scripture. But in fact if you read them in sequence they become more powerful yet. “For the word of God is alive and active.” That is, all this Old Testament word that is issued in this sequence that is disclosed now in Hebrews.

If you read it aright it’s giving you these warnings and encouragements. It’s unpacking God’s plans, his trajectories. It’s part of what brings us life now, the rest that is part of our inheritance already and will be consummated in the future. The word of God is alive. It’s not merely historical exposition of artifacts.

“Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.” That’s why we must persevere. “Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” That’s why we must persevere. This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.

Help us, Lord God, so to read and reread and reread your most Holy Word that we too will be given grace to discern more and more of the trajectories, the patterns, the sweeping flow that brings us irrevocably and gloriously to the Lord Jesus himself and the rest he has purchased at the price of his own blood for his own people, both for this life and for the life to come.

Grant that we may not only see these trajectories, but by grace also to persevere along them, to pursue faith and obedience knowing that you are at work within us both to will and to do of your good pleasure. We ask in the name of your dear Son our Savior, amen.